Silence, Water, Struggle, Hope
by What Ithacas Mean
Summary: Kallian Tabris is a Grey Warden looking for something to kill. Lissa Cousland is a noblewoman who's survived the destruction of everything she once held dear. Between them, they may be Alistair's best hope of survival.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: So I started messing around with Blood and Rhetoric, and I realised it's a bit AU. So I guess I should write some of the backstory first. Which I am trying here, despite the fact I really shouldn't be starting _anything_ right now.

Yes, I fail at finishing things, updating regularly, everything like that. I know, I suck, and "Time Cast Forth My Mortal Creature" has gone very long without an update. This is because I am still swamped by insane life things, and haven't had a chance to replay Redcliffe to remind myself of how very much I hate Isolde and Connor.

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><p><strong>title:<strong> "Silence, Water, Struggle, Hope"

**rating:** T.

**warnings:** violence against women, brutality.

**words:** c1500

**exegesis:** Warden Kallian Tabris is on the road from the Circle Tower to Denerim, passing through Highever lands. Lissa Cousland survived the destruction of Castle Highever and has been leading a minor guerrilla struggle in the hills around Highever ever since.

8

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><p>8<strong><br>**

_And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,  
>and link by link, and step by step;<br>sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,  
>thrust them into my breast, into my hands,<br>like a torrent of sunbursts,  
>an Amazon of buried jaguars,<br>and leave me cry: hours, days and years,  
>blind ages, stellar centuries.<em>

_And give me silence, give me water, hope._

_Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes._

_Let bodies cling like magnets to my body._

_Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth._

_Speak through my speech, and through my blood._

_- Pablo Neruda, "Canto XII from the Heights of Machu Pichu."_

8

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><p><em><span>Leliana<span>_

Howe's men squelch through the mud of the Great North Road, wretched in the constant drizzle. Two walk at the heads of the oxen that dragged their single, rattling cart, goading the tired beasts when they stumble. Another five, their shields piled in the cartbed, struggle at the cart's tail, lending their weight to heave it free of miring ruts. The rest of the company - all eight of them - make a valiant attempt to maintain a defensive formation under the sharp tongue of their sergeant. The officer perched on the cart seat with his arm in a sling has an even sharper eye, but despite his occasional shouted imprecations, the mud's depth and viscosity are thwarting their efforts.

Leliana trails them from the cover of the trees, an unseen whisper in the dripping undergrowth. Three days of ceaseless rain have left her sodden to the skin, stiff and chill and more than a little unhappy with the knowledge that her bow will be useless within moments of being strung. The miserable weather helps no one's spirits, and the memory of what came to pass at the Circle Tower clings close. Even Morrigan has been subdued in the week since Kinloch Hold, barely rousing to it when the opportunity to needle Alistair or Wynne arises. Alistair's disillusionment and Wynne's grief counterpoint Kallian Tabris' quiet fury: the elf Warden has been cold and silent since they found the battered mage girl in a cellar prison, untouched by Uldred's abominations, but bruised and bloody nonetheless. The visibly _pregnant_ battered mage girl.

The rumours of what templars do to apostates are apparently true even for Harrowed mages in solitary confinement, and Kallian's soft, cutting politeness with the Knight Commander made Leliana afraid.

It has almost been a relief to finally come across an enemy: a distraction from all the things they cannot fight and cannot change, and the bitter light in Kallian's eyes.

_And speak of the demon..._ The Warden comes ghosting up through the underbrush, mabari at her heels. Kallian has grown more skilled in the woods since they left Lothering. Leliana would not let her track alone, but her woodscraft is passable, now: better than Alistair's, if not as good as Sten's. Rainwater straggles her short dark hair across her forehead under her mail coif, trickles in rivulets from the harsh wings of her cheekbones. A breath of warm air on Leliana's nape, words almost hidden in the patter of rain in the leaves: "Give me some good news."

"Seventeen of them," Leliana murmurs back, equally soft. "Three walking wounded, counting the officer. All swords. I've seen two crossbows, but I doubt very much they have kept the bowstrings dry." She licked her lips, tasting rain and salt. "They have at least one prisoner in the cart, Kallian. Only one, I think. I could not get close enough to tell for sure, but I heard them talking. _We're bringing the bitch to the arl_, the sergeant said." Among other things. Templars and Orlesian chevaliers are not the only brutes in the world. _Maker, let me not fear the legion, though they set themselves against me._

Memory still has the power to wake her in cold sweat.

"So we could take them, but they might kill the prisoner - or prisoners - first." Kallian casts Leliana a grim, cold glance, slipping under a low-hanging branch. "Tell me why we shouldn't take that risk? We need information, if we're going to be passing through Howe's lands, and the fewer of his men we leave around to hunt us down the better."

Leliana swallows. That Kallian is ruthless - and ruthlessly pragmatic - she has known since Redcliffe. The cost of the Warden's ruthless pragmatism, _that_ she has seen in the deepening shadows under the elf's eyes, the bitter edge that turns her humour self-mocking, the terrible compassion that leavens the grim determination in her gaze.

Kallian, she thinks, _wants_ to be convinced.

"They will hardly take an unimportant prisoner to Howe himself." The loam of last year's leaves is thick here. She adjusts her step, careful to move soft and light, three-quarters of her attention on the small cavalcade in the road downslope and ahead. "And someone who is important to Howe could be useful to us. Have you not said we need all the allies we can get? Aside from which..." She lifts an eyebrow, wry. "Wouldyou really let someone die, if you thought you could save them?"

"You've seen me do it," the Warden said, softly. "If necessarily, I'll do it again. But not happily. And you're right about the prisoner. Or prison_ers_." She exhales and lets her hand fall to the mabari's ruff, as she does when thinking. "Morrigan scouted ahead in crow form earlier. She says there's an abandoned farmstead a few miles up the road that they'll probably reach before dusk. The farmhouse burned, but the barn's still standing, and there's a well. A perfect place to camp. What do you think our chances are if we hit them after dark?"

"Better." Leliana considers it. An ordinary watch-standing rotation apportions the nightwatch in three changes, which means no more than a third of the soldiers will be awake at once. Men as weary as these sleep deeply, and between them, she and Morrigan and Sten and Kallian should be able to account for the watch sentries without raising an alarm, leaving no barrier but stealth and speed to a swift massacre. Working for Marjolaine, she had led similar more than once. It disturbs her, a little, how easily the old ways of thought come back, though she cannot bring herself to feel much remorse for planning the deaths of men who jest not only about the fate awaiting their prisoner in Arl Howe's hands, but also what they intend to do to the woman en route. "_Much_ better, in fact. It should be much more straightforward to not only keep the prisoner alive, but to also capture someone. I would say the officer, since he is wounded."

"Good." Kallian's grin is feral, flashing. "I'll tell the others. We're hunting tonight."

8

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><p>8<p>

_Cousland_

Lissa Cousland will die soon.

She lies on her side in the bed of the cart, chill and sodden from the falling rain, and holds back tears of pain and despair through sheer force of will. One of her ankles is badly twisted, perhaps broken, and her bruised ribs make it hard to breathe. The gash on her upper arm she took when Howe's men caught up to her is crusted, red-hot and leaking pus: she can feel it, a throbbing feverish pain worse even than the jagged ache between her legs. Her hands are bound at the small of her back, hemp fibre chafing her wrists to weeping sores. One more indignity, and far from the worst.

It has been a night and a day since her capture, since the forester Arland betrayed her small warband of Cousland loyalists. They died where they stood, trusting him until the moment after the first arrow flew: Ser Brienne, a knight old for the rigours of a raiding war; Marjorie and Colm, fur trappers and farmers' children; the elf Rolan, whose loyalty to the lady knight was as matchless as his courage. Hafter, her mabari, last - save for her - survivor of the slaughter at Castle Highever. A night and a day since Howe's captain threw her down on the damp earth and knelt athwart her thighs, grinning. _My lord wants you alive, girl, not untouched._

If her stomach were not already empty, she would vomit, remembering. As it is, the taste of bile is a constant acid burn in her throat, companion to the sick sense of shame and humiliation that's almost worse than the pain. She _trusted_ Arland. But for Brienne, he was the first to follow her, vowing bloody vengeance upon Rendon Howe. Pledging not to rest until the Couslands were restored to their rightful place as lords of Highever.

_At least, _she thinks, with black and feverish humour, _I won't have very long to dwell on how_ very_ badly I failed._

Howe's men are careful. She has not been able to force them to kill her, though she has earned more bruises trying. The arl - the _bastard_ arl, may the Maker curse his name, may he wander the Black City for eternity - wants her alive so he can break her, so he can parade a confession in front of the Landsmeet to match his faked evidence. _Look, lords and ladies of Ferelden! She admits the Couslands plotted with Orlais against the Crown!_

She will have to try harder. She's not a fool. Even before Highever, rumour whispered that Howe kept a pet apostate, and paid the Amaranthine chantry to look the other way. If he truly does - if his pet mage is a maleficar - he _will_ have his confession, one way or another.

Many more nights and days like this will break her anyway.

8

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><p>8<p>

When the cart lurches to a stop, they come to drag her out, hard hands and crude jokes and the scent of iron and sweat. It's hopeless but she fights anyway, teeth and feet and a last mad desperate _suicidal_ strength, and it's not enough. It is _not enough -_

The fist that smashes into her temple in a white explosion of pain and brings dark unconsciousness in its wake is, at least, a merciful oblivion.


	2. Chapter 2

**title:** "Silence, Water, Struggle, Hope"

**chapter: **2**  
><strong>

**rating:** T.

**warnings:** violence against women, brutality.

**words:** c1500

**exegesis:** Warden Kallian Tabris is on the road from the Circle Tower to Denerim, passing through Highever lands. Lissa Cousland survived the destruction of Castle Highever and has been leading a minor guerrilla struggle in the hills around Highever ever since.

8

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><p><em><span>Alistair<span>_

Crouched in the darkness in the lee of a broken wall, Alistair waits in silence. Rain trickles down his neck, and under his scale his gambeson is sodden heavy with damp. The night is full of the noise of water and wind in the leaves of the trees that crowd close about the North Road, despite the law that commands every lord in Ferelden to kept a bowshot's length clear on either side of the road - a law not enforced since the occupation, and be damned to the cover it gives to brigands.

Brigands, and Grey Wardens. _We should be glad of it_, Alistair thinks, as Wynne shifts beside him, stifling a cough in the hem of her cowl. Despite a week on the road, the mage still smells more like lyrium and dust than mud and damp, sweat and smoke and old blood, but it's hard to be glad - hard to be anything but worried - with the old woman's bony warmth pressed up against his flank, waiting for a scream from the courtyard of the burnt farmstead fifty yards away. Waiting for the sound that means everything's gone terribly wrong.

It's little too close to banditry for his liking, this business of cutting throats in the night, but when Kallian materialises out of the rain, he can't help his relief. She bumps up against him, shoulder to mailed shoulder, warm and breathing and incontrovertibly alive. The cold steel of her left bracer is a hard line against his scale as she grips his forearm. Soft, she says, "Five men down in the courtyard. Leliana and Reaver watch the door, Sten and Morrigan the rear. I need you now." A motion of her head. "Both of you. Are you ready?"

Ready to enter the door of the dilapidated barn and kill men while they sleep. He listened to his part explained in the failing light of dusk, and did not argue then. It is his task, and Wynne's, to secure the prisoner; Leliana's and Kallian's, to take one of their own, while Sten and Morrigan and the mabari watch all their backs. He will not argue now: when she says _necessity, _Kallian will not be swayed. "I'm ready," he says, and swallows. "Lead on, fearless leader."

Her grin is a flash of whiteness before she turns away.

They go through the barn's rotting door like the blow of a hammer, a vanguard of Wardens two abreast. Wynne's magic hums in his senses, and in the blue light of her staff they slaughter. _He_ slaughters, and men startled from sleep die like chickens, like so many squawking fowl under a butcher's knife. Wynne is at his shieldarm, wild-eyed, grey hair on end with the static of killing spells crackling from her fingertips; Kallian and Leliana a whirlwind of murderous precision to his right, and the sound of men dying is steel and screaming and the wet noise of flesh and bone parting beneath his blade.

The prisoner is a girl, bound to a post by a rope halter around her neck. She is unconscious, bruised features pallid and slack. A tattered tunic, grimed with blood and dirt, rides up her thighs. Alistair averts his eyes and lowers his sword to the dirt as he smashes the last man aside with his shield for Wynne's lightning spell to stop his heart.

Over the sound of rasping breath and the gurgling moan of a soldier bleeding out, Kallian says, "Good work." She meets his glance across the barn, tired and full of grim irony. Her coif has fallen back to expose her pointed ears, and a smear of blood reddens her cheek in the dim blue light, but the officer is kneeling before her, her hand fisted in his hair and her sword at her throat, while Leliana loops a length of rope around his wrists and twists it tight.

"Butcher's work," Wynne says, lips pursed in disapproval, pushing past him to bend over the girl. She gives a hiss, and Alistair feels the Veil shiver as white light lances from her fingers. "Although I'm not saying they didn't deserve it. I'll need water and cloths and some of Morrigan's potions. Quickly, if you please."

"You, down." Kallian kicks the officer onto his belly with pointed emphasis and grinds a vicious heel into his ribs. Alistair makes an inarticulate noise of protest, but her black stare stills his tongue. "We'll be here a while, I take it, Wynne? Right. Leliana, I want a perimeter, whatever traps you can give me. Send in the others. Alistair, start the cleanup. Let's move, people: I want _some_ sleep tonight."

8

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><p>8<p>

_Cousland:_

Lissa wakes on warm, dry blankets. Wool scratches her bare skin, tickles her nose. It smells like armour polish, lavender, and mabari fur. That she wakes at all is a bitter disappointment. That she is not cold and damp and hurting is... unexpected.

_What happened?_

She lies still and takes stock. Somewhere nearby a mabari is barking, a woman's voice - kindly but unamused, reminding her painfully of Nan - berating a boy for leaving socks in her bedroll. Closer - so close she could reach out and touch it - soft breathing and the slow rasp of a whetstone on steel. She aches, but it is the ache of wounds near-healed, not jaggedly immediate. Her head is clear. No fever. Cautiously, she flexes hands and feet: no bonds, either. Her skin is itchy with dried sweat and dirt, her mouth is dry as a desert, and she's naked and weak with the lassitude of fatigue, but otherwise? Healthier than she's been for weeks.

She opens her eyes.

An elf sits cross-legged a yard from her blankets, the sleeves of a too-large brown shirt rolled halfway up hard-muscled forearms. Young, and female, sharp-cheeked, dark-haired and hollow-eyed. Sunlight through the broken slats of the wood wall - the faint scent of hay and old manure makes Lissa think _barn_ - lights patterns from the steel of the dagger the elf's sharpening, the blade resting on a stained rag on her knee. Someone's rigged a canvas partition around their corner, and the ragged end wavers with the movement of the air.

The whetstone ceases. Without looking up, the elf says, "If you're awake, I expect you'd like some water."

Lissa's lips are cracked, tongue swollen. She manages a nod in place of speech. The elf slides the dagger into a sheath in her boot and uncaps a leather canteen. She flinches despite herself when the elf reaches for her shoulder to help her sit.

"I'm not your enemy, kid." The words are neutral, but the elf squats back on her heels with the quirk of an eyebrow, and waits until Lissa's propped herself up on one elbow, holding the blanket across her breasts, to offer the canteen again.

The water tastes like old leather, but it's wet, and to her parched throat better than fine Antivan wine. She makes herself hand it back with some left in the bottom, and meets the elf's dark eyes. "You're not Howe's?"

_Please. Dear Andraste, please let this not be some kind of trick._

"Howe?" The elf's features tighten. "Spit on the shem bastard. Don't worry, kid. You're safe with us."

"'Us?'" They must have a mage with them: her wounds were much worse than mere herbalism could have dealt with easily. _Have I fallen in with apostates, then?_

"Our merry band of doomed fools." The flicker of a smile. "You'll meet 'em in a bit. I thought you might need a little time to wake up and wash up before introducing you to too many people." The smile vanished, replace with dark, bitter understanding. "When we found you, it was obvious you hadn't been... treated kindly. You can wash" - a shrug indicated a bucket by the hung canvas - "There's water, and it's warm. And we've managed to scrounge a shirt and trews that look to fit you. But first, I need to know. What did Howe's men want with you?"

"Besides the _obvious_?" Shame and humiliation scalds Lissa. Bad enough that it happened, that she can remember the captain's sour breath in her face and his hands on her breasts, but that this elf should throw it in her face -

"Besides that," the elf agrees mildly. A calloused hand closes around Lissa's wrist, a light grip - but with all the give of wrought iron. "Kid, you're far from the first girl to be beaten within an inch of her life and fucked against her will. There's no shame in it. The shame's on them, for what they did when you had no choice. You understand me?"

"For an elf," Lissa snaps, brittle, "you're not very respectful."

"Aye, well." The elf's chuckle all irony and cracked, bitter shards of amusement "My so-called betters _did_ try to beat it into me, but it didn't really take." Softly, gently: "Like any other wound, kid, it gets easier with time."

Lissa looks aside, picks at the blanket. The elf's eyes know too much. "I said I'd kill Rendon Howe," she says, after a long, stiff moment. It's the truth, if not all of it. If they don't already know who she is, there's a chance they'll turn her in for the bounty on her head if she gives her name. _And I cannot bear that._ "I said I would, and I will."

"Aye, I hear he's a man needs killing." The elf shifts, stands. Briskly: "I'll leave you wash in peace. Clothes and a towel beside the bucket. Take all the time you need."

_All the time you need._ The canvas ripples in the wake of the elf's passing. Lissa stares after her, still hot with humiliation, and wonders what sort of company she's fallen in with now.

* * *

><p>8<p>

_A/N: Yes, Lissa's being a little paranoid. Who saves someone just to turn them back in? But in her defence, she's not really thinking straight right now._

_I live for your encouragement, or for your scorn, so please feel free to tell me what you think.  
><em>


	3. Chapter 3

**title:** "Silence, Water, Struggle, Hope"

**chapter: **3**  
><strong>

**rating:** T.

**warnings:** violence against women.

**words:** c1000

**exegesis:** Warden Kallian Tabris is on the road from the Circle Tower to Denerim, passing through Highever lands. Lissa Cousland survived the destruction of Castle Highever and has been leading a minor guerrilla struggle in the hills around Highever ever since.

* * *

><p><em><span>Leliana<span>:_

By the hour after daybreak, the rain has finally stopped.

Leliana tunes her battered lyre in the sun's blessed warmth, a tedious business of replacing damp gut strings with dry and fiddling with wooden pegs. She hasn't played since the rain started and she has a feeling they all need a cheerful tune.

Their bedrolls are draped over a broken wall to air, and the grass is covered with armour-padding spread out to dry in the gleaming morning sun. Wynne, bleary-eyed with lack of sleep, is doing something with a container of ointment in the long shadow of the barn, while Alistair darns his socks and pretends he's not watching over the old mage with worry. Sten is polishing his massive breastplate - and how the qunari can bear to march under that weight day after day, Leliana will never know - and Reaver is flopped on his belly, watching their bound prisoner with mabari-brown eyes and the hint of teeth. Morrigan disappeared off into the woods at dawn, black sarcasm and dripping scorn and _Someone must hunt for dinner, for 'twill hardly hunt itself._

She hums under her breath, and tunes, and considers their prisoner. A dark-haired man in his thirties, grubby from too long on the road. Hard, calloused, the kind of man who's been a soldier from the moment he could lift a sword. He will not answer questions easily, if at all. But she does not think Kallian is likely to accept _no _for an answer.

_There's two ways this falls out_, the elf Warden said at sunrise, soft as a prayer, as she squatted beside the man and knotted her hand in his hair, twisting his head up to meet her mask-calm gaze. _You answer my questions, and I'll make sure you die clean. You refuse, and I'll break your legs and leave you for the wolves. It doesn't make that much difference to me._

_I'll let you think about that for a while._

There was something in her eyes that makes Leliana believe it is not a lie.

Neither Wynne nor Alistair were within earshot, then. Not mere chance, no. The glance the Warden cast Leliana on her way inside the barn, tight-lipped and pale of face, a glance that begged for - _Understanding_, she thinks, and _forgiveness_, though the weight of Kallian Tabris's gaze was more complicated than either - that, too, was no mere chance.

Now fabric rustles behind her, and the prisoner's expression hardens. "Kallian," Leliana says, and leans into the hand that falls on her shoulder, the warm line of the elf's body pressed up against her back. "The girl is well?"

"Better than I expected." The Warden's sigh stirs her hair. Leliana tilts her head up, meets dark weary eyes. "She's got a noble's pride, though, and it's been fair dented. You'd know better than me how well she's like to do, I think." Kallian's fingers tighten, but her expression and voice stay mild. "Back home, I never had the idea that I was... untouchable. If I wanted to survive, it _had_ to be just one more damn thing that was going to happen, like rain and hunger." Her smile flashes, wry. "An elf doesn't learn to fight without paying for it in every _possible_ way. Even - especially - the times when you can't afford to fight."

_Just one more damn thing._ Leliana will have bruises on her shoulder from Kallian's grip, but the Warden's tone has not once deviated from a conversational lightness. She remembers a dungeon, men violent and brutal in torchlight darkness, the humiliation of helplessness - the strange gentleness in the Warden's eyes, that night on the shores of Lake Calenhad, when she said _I lied to you, you know. About why I left Orlais_ - and thinks that perhaps yes, the Warden is not entirely likely to be the best judge of a noble girl's prospects of recovery from beating and rape. She tilts her head. "Do you want me to go to her?"

"If you would. I don't want to leave her alone too long." Kallian unclenches her grip, shakes out her fingers with a rueful sideways look. "Sorry. I didn't realise..."

"You didn't hurt me." Not quite the truth, but the pain is trivial. Leliana sets her lyre aside, stands. "What are you going to do with our friend over here?"

Kallian flicks a glance towards the prisoner. "Has he said anything yet?"

"Nothing worth listening to."

"Shit." Her eyes are hard, voice quiet. She shifts her swordbelt - slung across her shoulder - a notch higher. "I guess there's no help for it, then. Tell Sten and Alistair to come over here on your way inside, would you? If he's not going to talk on his own, we're going to have to bully him into it."

Leliana frowns. Not that she disagrees with the sentiment, but... "Alistair?" The other Warden is still in many ways an innocent.

Kallian's smile is fleeting. "He'll keep me honest. Torture's a crude tool. Next to useless for good information - but I know myself too well. I don't hold back when I'm angry. Alistair won't let me go too far. Or even very far at all. And objectively, even a fucking rapist deserves a clean death."

"Good luck," Leliana says softly, and cups the nape of Kallian's neck - a brief, affectionate caress - before she walks away.

* * *

><p><em>AN__: Life continues crazy. Expect very very very very infrequent updates. _


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: By some miracle, I am not yet dead. Here, a long-overdue update!_

* * *

><p><em><span>Cousland<span>_

Long heartbeats pass before Lissa wraps the scratchy wool blanket around her shoulders and - slowly, stiffly - gets to her feet. Her ankle takes her weight with hardly a twinge. When she breathes deep, barn-scents and old charcoal and the dust of last year's hay filling her nostrils, her ribs don't so much as ache. As though the last two days had never happened.

_And what if they didn't? _"It didn't happen," she murmurs, testing the words. _It was a nightmare. It's over._ "Pretend it didn't happen." She's a Cousland, name of Andraste! She's not going give the memory of Howe's cowardly, traitorous _rabble_ any power over her. Not if she can help it.

She may have lost Highever, but that much, at least, is still in her power.

_Enough bitter thoughts._ There's a bucket. It sits on the packed earth in the spill of light through the wall's loose slats. An off-kilter three-legged stool stands beside it, shirt and trews and clean underthings folded on top. Lissa fingers the fabric. Coarse wool, but the underthings are linen. Her own boots, cleaned. There's a belt with the trews - her own, down to the enamelled bronze buckle in the shape of a mabari, and the sheath for a knife.

Empty, of course. Her mouth twists. However polite her captors, without a weapon she's still a prisoner.

But at least she can be a clean one. As the elf promised, the water in it is even warm. Lukewarm, but Lissa's spent the last season bathing in icy streams. Even lukewarm water feels like luxury in comparison.

She scrubs scabs and sweat and grime from her skin, trying not to look at the scars. Shiny red lines circle her wrists, and the wound she thought would cripple her swordarm is a stiff white line in the meat of her triceps. Mage's craft in the healing. She prods it with her fingertips, feeling less of a rigid knot than she expects. _Well, if they're apostates, they've treated you more kindly than the Chantry boys in the arl's service._ The Amaranthine sergeant had yanked his archer's stray crossbow bolt back through her flesh heedless of its barbs -

Her breath catches in her throat. For a humiliating moment, there are hot tears behind her eyes. Angrily, she blinks them away and sloshes her cloth in the soiled water, scrubbing what's left of the grime savagely away. Her hair's still short enough to take the same treatment, cropped for mourning after Highever burned.

She's doing up the shirtlaces when a shadow on the far side of the canvas partition warns her of someone's approach. Habit makes her reach for her missing knife. In its absence, her gaze darts to the stool and bucket -

"Are you decent?" a woman's lightly accented voice asks. "May I come around?"

An Orlesian accent. Lissa considers. "Can I stop you?"

"Certainly." The Orlesian sounds amused. "Merely say "no," and I shall wait breathlessly for you to emerge in your own good time."

"Since you ask so nicely..." Lissa says, dry. She rubs her damp palms against her thighs, forcing her nameless dread down in the pit of her stomach. "Come ahead."

The woman who ducks around the stained canvas partition is perhaps Fergus's age, no more than a double hand of years Lissa's elder. Lithe and red-haired, with a brilliant smile, she wears a much-mended Chantry robe with a sword belted at her hip, and moves like a dancer.

_Chantry robe. Mage-healing. Not apostates, then?_ Lissa keeps her uncertainty from her features.

"How are you feeling?" the Orlesian says, with a birdlike tilt of her head. Her eyes are sharp beneath the bangs of her fringe. "Kallian said you'd waked. Are you feeling well enough to come get some breakfast?"

"Kallian." Lissa keeps her voice light and dry with effort, too conscious of the arm's length that separates her from the Orlesian's loose, empty hands. _Breathe, Cousland. Breathe._ "That's your elf?"

"An elf, indeed, but hardly mine." A quirked lip. "My name is Leliana, formerly a lay sister of the Lothering chantry..."

Her pause is expectant. "Lissa," Lissa says, reluctant. On its own, her name won't betray her: it's not uncommon in Ferelden's north, and she was never any good at remembering to answer to another. _When you're deceiving someone, _Brienne had advised her once, when they were discussing how to hide and strike back at Arl Rendon, _keep to the truth as much as you can. It will save you keeping track of lies. _"Of Highever, until recently. Howe's men killed my father. After that..." She shrugs, uneasy, and bites her lip. "I've been hiding. I said I'd kill the arl. I guess his men took me seriously. But what's a chantry sister - Orlesian, unless I miss my guess - doing out in the wilderness?"

"My mother was Fereldan." The other woman - Leliana - lifts a shoulder. "As to the rest - ah, but that's a long story. And I expect you're hungry, no?"

"Yes." Hungry, and curious. And afraid. Her fingers itch for the hilt of a weapon, even though from all the evidence these strangers mean her no harm. _But they don't know my name. _At least with her knife, she could make _sure _she will never fall into Howe's hands.

Leliana gestures, holding back the canvas curtain. Lissa ducks through in front of her -

And stops, staring. Sunlight shines through the barn's open south-facing door, illuminating the dry earth underfoot. There're weapons and armour stacked against the east wall, some of it stained the rusty brown of dried blood. Mail, swords, shields with Howe's brown-bear device...

"Kallian hates to leave good metal to rust," Leliana says, lightly. The Chantry sister steps around her, her expression wry. "So we leave it out of the rain when we can. If you stay with us, doubtless we'll find you _something_ out of that mess to fit. But first, come and meet the others."

"You killed them _all_?" And she's still alive. These strangers have kept her alive. _Should I be afraid?_

"As good as." The wry expression flickers grim and back to cheerful mildness in less time than it takes for Lissa to blink. "Come, we can speak of such things later."

Leliana never moves to touch her, but Lissa finds herself steered gently to the barn's open door nonetheless. The sunlight is strong enough after the dimness to make her squint, wincing and shading her eyes against its brightness. Noon, or close enough. The barn is the only roofed structure standing in the midst of burnt-out ruins. This was a small farmstead, once, but now the lumpy outlines of bedrolls are draped on the remains of the farmhouse wall. A small fire burns in a firepit in the centre of the former farmyard. Beside it is an older woman in robes of brown wool perched on a cut log, absently stirring a kettle with one hand and turning the pages of a book with the other. Her glance lifts as they approach, and a genuine smile curves her lips. "You're awake, child. I'm very glad to see it."

"This is Wynne," Leliana says, soft. "Senior Enchanter Wynne, of the Circle Tower. She is the one who healed your injuries. Wynne, this is Lissa." A hesitation. "Is Kallian -?"

_Senior Enchanter. So, not apostates, then. _

_ I didn't think Senior Enchanters travelled without templar escort._

"They went into the woods," Wynne says, an edge touching her voice.

"Ah." A shadow rippled the lay sister's cheerfulness. Only briefly. "Well, I expect they'll be back in good time. But for now - how's that vegetable soup? I believe our guest is hungry."

"And no wonder." Wynne's expression is all grandmotherly concern. "Magic does have limits. Sit, child - Lissa, you said? When you've eaten I'll want to examine you again, but that can wait for now."

Somehow, Lissa finds herself sitting on a second cut log, a steaming bowl of soup between her hands. Leliana produces a round of cheese and two small loaves of hard dark bread from a nearby pack. Only when the food is three-quarters gone does Lissa realise she has been the only one eating: when she raises her eyes from her bowl, it is to find the lay sister regarding her with grave amusement. "I didn't realise," she says, to distract herself from the sudden flush of self-conscious embarrassment, "that senior enchanters ever travelled very far without templars."

"It has been something of a special circumstance." Wynne lays her book aside, a distant sadness in her eyes. "The Circle Tower - you won't have heard, I don't suppose - the Circle Tower suffered a very great tragedy recently. The Knight Commander could spare none of his men to travel with me."

"Just as well." Leliana's mouth twists, bitterly wry. "I do not think Kallian would have welcomed their presence, after what we saw. I _know _Morrigan would not."

Lissa looks from one to the other. "Morrigan?" It is hard, bitterly hard, to keep frustration and confusion from her voice, make it _only _inquiring. She cannot be weak. She dare not _show _it, not until she knows what these people mean for her.

Wynne and Leliana exchange a glance, one that mingles unease and resignation. "You'll meet her soon enough, I expect," Leliana says, at length.

"Say rather _now_," a harsh voice interjects. Lissa startles backwards, bruising her elbows on the grass. Leliana's hand dips to her belt. The woman who has rounded the side of the ruined barn in utter silence bares her teeth, and Lissa sees Leliana's expression go from hard to mild in a heartbeat. "Morrigan," the lay sister says, light. "We hadn't expected you until later."

A sardonic look. "I found our fearless leader in the wood. Sten and Alistair will be carrying home my deer." Yellow eyes raked Lissa, assessingly, snorts. "And this is our latest stray? She hardly looks worth the effort." A curl of her lip, and she stalks away without waiting for an answer.

Lissa picks herself up from the ground, flushed with anger. "She -"

Leliana sighs, resigned. "That's Morrigan."

"Is she like that with _everyone_?" A galling thought, but less galling than the idea she had been singled out for scorn.

"Mostly." Leliana glances to Wynne, receives a nod. "If you're finished eating, we should probably let Wynne look you over."

Lissa hates feeling this vulnerable. But she agrees.


End file.
